Understanding Northern Pass Cost Recovery

There have been questions raised recently about the cost of the Northern Pass project and the means of recovery of those expenses. The statement below is an explanation of the continued relationship between Northern Pass and Hydro-Québec.

Eversource and Hydro-Québec have had a long-standing partnership to develop a transmission project that would deliver much-needed clean hydropower from Québec to New England energy consumers. Northern Pass Transmission, an Eversource subsidiary, will finance and build Northern Pass, the US portion of the transmission project. Hydro-Québec will do the same for the Canadian portion of the project.

The cost of Northern Pass will be recovered through use of the transmission line for delivery of energy to New England.

There is currently a large and growing demand for clean energy in the region to replace retiring generating units and meet aggressive carbon reduction goals. The next significant opportunity will occur later this spring when Massachusetts begins a solicitation process to secure long-term commitments to deliver large amounts of clean energy to the Commonwealth. Eversource and HQ are working together to submit a very competitive proposal to Massachusetts for the delivery of hydropower from Québec using the Northern Pass transmission line, which will go a long way towards achieving the Commonwealth’s goals.

Recovery of the Northern Pass project costs will be part of the proposal. However, as we have stated previously, New Hampshire consumers will not pay for any costs associated with the project.